The Ground — Lee's Answer to Jesus' Prayer for Unity

[OBW]

There is a new thread on Deputy Authority that speaks of elders putting people out of the church for not toeing the line and keeping any questions or doubts to themselves. We talk about the abusive leadership. The dogma and exclusivity. The wholesale disregard for significant portions of the scripture, whether it is James, the Psalms, even Jesus words concerning obedience. And on and on it goes.

And it has bothered me why highly educated people put up with it. While we have noted that the system naturally attracts some who are weak minded, there are an uncanny number of highly intelligent people who do not just stand up and declare it all to be ridiculous and walk out with a number of others in their wake.

But these are not where my thinking began. It began with the ground of the church. Actually, not even there, but with the prayer by Jesus that we would be one. It began to bother me that as important as being one is, it was essentially not taught directly by Christ. Instead it was prayed that we would become one.

Then along came Witness Lee who declared that being one was easy. You can just meet together “on the ground” and all would be well. Drop names and the blessing of God would flow. No need to arrive at the unity of the faith. Just arrive at the meeting hall of those in your city that “meet on the ground.”

Then attribute everything positive to the fact of the ground. And declare everything that is negative to the attack of the evil one. Convince them (once upon a time that included us) that it was the ground that provided all the benefits. Once you are fully indoctrinated with the ground — that magical, no effort ground — then you will tolerate a lot of problems to keep your place on the ground.

You will tolerate deputy authority. You will tolerate the trite “it doesn’t mean that” or “that is not according to God’s economy” because failing to go along could separate you from the ground.

And without the ground, there is no unity. There is no oneness.

And the thing that Jesus had to pray for on our behalf was finally made easy by a Chinese minister almost 20 centuries later when he figured out what Jesus could have taught in just a few words back in about 29 A.D.